Hilman and Miller Designing Multiple Baseline Graphs Using Microsoft Excel

5 Answers 5

What you want to do is to wrap the text in the current cell. You can do this manually by pressing Alt + Enter every time you want a new line

Or, you can set this as the default behaviour by pressing the Wrap Text in the Home tab on the Ribbon. Now, whenever you hit enter, it will automatically wrap the text onto a new line rather than a new cell.

Gaff

17.8k 14 gold badges 55 silver badges 68 bronze badges

answered Nov 22 '09 at 13:34

Josh HuntJosh Hunt

20.9k 19 gold badges 81 silver badges 122 bronze badges

5

• The link here has rotted. Not sure what it was supposed to be.

  May 4 '15 at 20:36

• Not quite the same as the OP's question, but you can also wrap existing text by selecting the cells, and selectiing "Format Cells..." and then clicking the "Wrap Text" checkbox.

  Feb 28 '17 at 20:34

• For those of you who are software developers and confused by all the talk about "wrap the text" and "why would 'word wrapping' need to be enabled"... in Excel... if you want to have a more than one line of text... then "word wrapping" MUST be enabled. You can test this "feature" by inserting a new line via alt + enter then disabling "word wrapping" and see your new line character somehow disappears.

  Jun 21 '18 at 11:34

• For those familiar with libreoffice, inserting new lines is done via ctrl + enter and does not require enabling "word wrapping" for a cell.

  Jun 21 '18 at 11:37

• "Now, whenever you hit enter, it will automatically wrap the text onto a new line rather than a new cell." ... does this still work for anyone with the 2019 version of Excel? When I turn on "Wrap Text" for the cells, pressing Enter is still going down to the next row. I'm working on a spreadsheet where I'm always entering multiple lines of text, so would really love this to work. Holding ALT every time is too cumbersome.

  Aug 5 '19 at 10:37

You have to use Alt+Enter to enter a carriage return inside a cell.

soandos

23.5k 28 gold badges 99 silver badges 133 bronze badges

answered Nov 22 '09 at 13:33

fretjefretje

10.7k 5 gold badges 38 silver badges 63 bronze badges

1. Edit a cell and type what you want on the first "row"
2. Press one of the following, depending on your OS:

   
   Windows: Alt + Enter

   Mac: Ctrl + Option + Enter

3. Type what you want on the next "row" in the same cell
4. Repeat as needed.

Note that inserting carriage returns with the key combinations above produces different behavior than turning on Wrap Text. In the screenshot below, column A has the carriage returns and column B has Wrap Text turned on. Changing the width of a column with carriage returns doesn't remove them. Changing the width of a column with Wrap Text turned on will change where the lines break.

answered Nov 13 '12 at 22:11

Jon CrowellJon Crowell

2,216 5 gold badges 23 silver badges 34 bronze badges

1

• Kudos to you for including the keyboard shortcut for Mac

  Mar 16 '17 at 0:06

Use the combination alt+enter

answered Nov 22 '09 at 13:33

WayneWayne

1,135 8 silver badges 10 bronze badges

Alt + Enter never worked for me. I had to go to Format Cells and make sure that the Number tab was set to Text. That allowed me to see exactly as I had input. My issue could have been Mac specific though.

jonsca

4,067 15 gold badges 33 silver badges 46 bronze badges

answered Aug 26 '12 at 0:58

Mr. DMr. D

71 1 silver badge 1 bronze badge

1

• [Alt]+[Enter] is windows specific, the Mac specific code is in another answer

  Mar 25 '17 at 0:44

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged microsoft-excel text-editing or ask your own question.

Hilman and Miller Designing Multiple Baseline Graphs Using Microsoft Excel

Source: https://superuser.com/questions/73838/how-to-write-multi-lines-in-one-excel-cell

Share this post